From the Chicago Tribune
Illinois Supreme Court Justice Lloyd Karmeier hadn’t declared victory as of Wednesday, but by the slimmest of margins he appears to have staved off a furious, last-minute effort by plaintiffs’ lawyers to unseat him.
A spokesman for Karmeier’s campaign said the judge received 60.6 percent of the vote cast in his 37-county judicial district in southern Illinois, according to the campaign’s unofficial calculations. He needed 60 percent to stay on the court for a second 10-year term.
“We are cautiously optimistic that the justice’s numbers will hold and maybe even increase as provisional, absentee and military ballots are finished being tabulated,” said Ron Deedrick, Karmeier’s campaign manager.
Deedrick later told The Associated Press he’d be unsurprised if Karmeier’s opponents sought a recount or sued over the results.
“It just seems to be sometimes what these parties do,” Deedrick said. “Some parties are just playing out the election from 10 years ago,” when Karmeier first was elected to the high court after a tight race that cost the two candidates more than $9 million, shattering state and national spending records for a judicial seat.
Seeking to bounce Karmeier from the bench, several attorneys and law firms in mid-October launched the “Campaign for 2016” that state records show collected more than $1 million ultimately poured into television commercials, automated calls and mailings that labeled Karmeier too tight with business.
At least $500,000 of those contributions came from two attorneys for the Korein Tillery law firm with offices in St. Louis and Chicago.
Stephen Tillery, a St. Louis-based principle of Korein Tillery, is seeking Karmeier’s recusal from the Supreme Court’s consideration of an appeal of a decade-old $10.1 million class-action verdict against Phillip Morris USA. A lower court ruled in Tillery’s favor over the nation’s biggest cigarette maker’s marketing of “light” and “low tar” designations.
Karmeier was the only judge on the seven-member court who was up for retention. In Illinois, Supreme Court judges are elected to 10-year terms on a partisan ballot and then run on a nonpartisan retention ballot after their initial terms.